From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The East Stairs

At six forty-five I stood in the east wing lobby with a ring in my fist and my scalpel in my sleeve.

The burned corridor still stank of smoke.

Tancredi had told me his plan in the car, because those were my rules.

He would wait in the west lobby with the dock captain's men, out of sight and past fifty feet.

"Don't be early," I had said.

"If I hear a shot, I'm coming," he had said. "Tell me not to."

"I won't."

Now he was gone, and I was alone with the door to the east stairwell.

It was grey metal with a scorch mark across the middle.

I put my hand on the bar.

I had died on the other side of it, on the ground floor landing, on the fourth step from the bottom.

I knew that step. It had a crack across the nose, and I had looked at it for a long time.

I pushed the door open and went up.

On the second landing a man in a black jacket stood with his back to the wall.

He was the soldier who had shot the guard in the Don's room, and he had the gun in his right hand.

"Donna," he said. "The ring."

"I'm told it's the fourth floor."

"I'm told to take it now."

"Then you're told wrong."

He stepped in front of me and put the muzzle against my stomach.

"I could shoot you right here."

"You could," I said. "And you'd do it with one hand."

"What?"

I had already moved.

The scalpel came out of my sleeve, and I drew it across the back of his wrist, one clean stroke, through the skin and into the tendon.

His fingers opened, and the gun hit the concrete.

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